The Government should ban drivers from using hands-free phones in the wake of a lorry driver being jailed for causing a fatal crash while talking on a Bluetooth headset.

The call came from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents following the jailing of Mervyn Richmond (49) for four-and-a-half-years after he was convicted at Lincoln Crown Court of causing death by dangerous driving.

Richmond was so engrossed in a conversation with his mother that he failed to notice traffic ahead of him had come to a standstill. He ploughed into the back of the queue, killing Michael Buston, a passenger in a van, and left other people seriously injured on the A631 at Corringham in Lincolnshire in March last year.

The use of hand-held mobile phones is already illegal, but RoSPA spokesman Roger Vincent has urged the Government to impose a blanket ban on making phone calls while driving, saying that the law on hand-held sets failed to address the issue. About 30 road deaths a year are linked to mobile phone use.

He said: “The conversation itself is the problem. People get more and more involved in that and pay less and less attention to the road.

“Whether you are using a hand-held or a hands-free phone you are four times more likely to have a crash. Is it really worth that sort of risk just to make a phone call? The sentence shows how seriously courts take the issue.”

How many times have I banged on about this? There is life outside a mobile phone.

Jackie Violet - Female First